


Reminders

by dykejonze



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Prompt Fill, gross old men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-13
Updated: 2016-04-13
Packaged: 2018-06-02 02:31:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6547027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dykejonze/pseuds/dykejonze
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first one greets him in his office, bright yellow and waiting, the morning Levi goes beyond the walls without him. Erwin doesn’t know how long the note has been sitting on his desk but he sees it now, sticking out like a sore thumb against the neat stack of papers and the dark wooden frame, scrawled out in barely legible chicken scratch that crawls up the little note at an angle. </p>
<p>
  <i>eat something.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reminders

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blessedthrice](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blessedthrice/gifts).



The first one greets him in his office, bright yellow and waiting, the morning Levi goes beyond the walls without him. Erwin doesn’t know how long the note has been sitting on his desk but he sees it now, sticking out like a sore thumb against the neat stack of papers and the dark wooden frame, scrawled out in barely legible chicken scratch that crawls up the little note at an angle. 

_eat something._

It surprises him and he can’t quite figure out how he didn’t notice it sooner, but for someone who notices everything he’s always been a bit daft to the little things sitting so clearly in front of his face. He responds to it with a quiet chuckle and a head shake, but his workload is never ending and there are only so many hours in a day-- eating will have to wait. It glares at him though, the scrawled words, as Levi might have had he been in sitting beside him, and more than once Erwin catches himself stealing a glance at the little note, brows raised as if he’s expecting it to suddenly start speaking to him, to say “Are you listening to me, you overgrown piece of shit?” His office is unusually quiet, unusually empty without the smaller man’s bite to fill the space, and the presence of the note makes it hard for Erwin to focus, some kind of guilt setting in and spreading the longer he tries to ignore it. 

He gets up with a resigned sigh. A quick lunch won’t kill him, he decides, and he leaves the note where it is to glare and scoff away the strange loneliness that has come over him until Levi’s return to headquarters some days later. By the time the captain pokes his head into Erwin’s office, it’s hidden under a file in a drawer. Levi doesn’t ask if Erwin remembered to eat, and Erwin doesn’t mention it. 

 

It’s some months later that the second appears, stuck to the mirror in his quarters. His pillow still smells like Levi’s hair but the sheets are cold and through the window over looking the training grounds, Erwin can make out the tiny figure of the man intimidating the new recruits. He hardly remembers falling asleep the night before and it’s a wonder he made it to bed at all, the way he was dozing off in his chair over the latest budget report. Something tells him he’d been henpecked and dragged all the way down the hall, up the stairs, out of his clothes, and under the covers, and he knows he shouldn’t be allowing Levi to spend the night with him but Levi curls against him like a kitten in his sleep and it’s the only time he’s ever felt so warm. 

He might have missed it altogether, had he been less vain about maintaining a perfect head of hair, and it surprises him again the way it had the first time, but he smiles like he only can for Levi at the large sloppy letters taking up the entire thing.

_ shave. _

He inspects the stubble on his face, knowing he’s not been keeping up with it much under the stress of the impending budget meeting, the ever-looming threat of cutting back already dismal financing, but he certainly didn’t think the little hairs were offensive by any means. The good captain would disagree, apparently, because he underlined the word and ended it with a period as if to say, “You’re getting ugly, Smith,” so Erwin does as he’s told and shaves his face before he dares to greet the day outside his bedroom.

When he goes to his office, he brings the note with him and sticks it in the drawer, under the file with the first one, and from time to time he catches himself opening the drawer to look at them sitting side-by-side. Levi doesn’t say anything about the commander’s clean-shaven face when he joins him that afternoon, but he gives him a once-over and Erwin can only assume he approves, because he sits down and there’s a tiny tug at the corners of his lips so slight that only Erwin would ever notice it. 

 

The trip to the capital is long and boring and lonely. Erwin tries to busy himself with work, with reading, with staring out the window, but after the eighth or ninth opportunity for an aptly-timed shit joke is met with silence, he can only sigh, noticing Levi’s absence more than he thought he would. It isn’t often that he makes these trips alone, and every time he does, that loneliness cuts into him deeper than the time before. He tries to push it from his mind, returning to his paperwork, to his notes, to the meeting he wishes he wasn’t going to. 

It’s in the small pile of papers he’s sorting through some hours later, as Zackly drones on about this thing and that, green this time and all Erwin can wonder is where Levi is finding these things to begin with because wondering is the only thing that will stop him from grinning like an idiot. He shuffles the papers, letting the note disappear, feeling strangely comforted, as if Levi is in the empty chair at his side, snorting into a cup of tea and insulting everyone in the room (“Nile, when are you going to start brushing your teeth so we don’t have to _smell_ the shit that’s coming out of your mouth?”). He revisits it later, when he’s alone, running a finger over the little smudge of ink that blurs the letters together. 

_hope you still remember how to wipe your ass without me there to do it for you._

Erwin puts it with the others in his desk upon his return, and though Levi never says the words “I missed you,” he sleeps that night like he hasn’t slept a wink since Erwin left. 

 

There are times when everything seems hopeless, when there are more dead than living and Erwin wonders what kind of man he really is, leading these people, more often than not still children, to meet their end at the hands and the jaws of of the Titans. There’s blood on his hands and it doesn’t evaporate like Titan blood does, it doesn’t turn into steam and vanish like a bad dream, but it stays and it festers. He doesn’t know anymore how many lives he’s taken, but his hands are soaking wet and heavy and red. He rides back to the walls stoney-faced, prepared for the crowds, for the murmurs he’s grown so accustomed to. The people don’t believe in the Survey Corps, in him, they never really have, and Erwin can’t expect them to when now he’s unable to believe in himself. 

He doesn’t speak, doesn’t turn his head to look, but he can feel gunmetal eyes baring into him, careful and guarded, as if Levi is waiting for him to vanish, to wither into nothingness and blow away in the wind in front of him. The smaller man doesn’t have any words to offer, no reassurance, not now, and Erwin is almost grateful for the silence, to know he’s not alone in this suffering, that Levi feels it too. He’s never claimed to be selfless, and misery does love company. 

It’s waiting on his desk like the first one had been, yellow again. He sees it almost instantly. Levi shuts the door behind them and freezes there like he’d forgotten that he’d left it at all, like he’s wondering if he should run, but he sits instead in his usual chair beside the desk as Erwin clutches the note in his hand, lips parted, breathless. 

_i love you._

He looks at Levi, who looks at his hands and at his feet and at the floor, who shrugs his shoulders and says, “Just in case” and nothing more. 

In an instant, the smaller body is pulled against his, and Erwin can smell his hair and his skin and his sweat, can feel the warmth of his body like fire, the quickness of his breath, the beating of his heart. The note joins the others in the drawer with Levi in his lap, cheek against his chest, and he can feel a small laugh escape him before he can hear it.

“You sappy bastard.” 

Erwin can only smile, pressing a soft kiss to the crown of Levi’s head and whispers, “Thank you.”

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this as a prompt fill for my girlfriend because I used to write her stupid messages on sticky notes and leave them around the house for her to find. I don't know how Levi got sticky notes so you just have to pretend they existed in 850. If they can have guns, they can have paper that sticks to things.


End file.
